Video: Savages: "I Am Here"

Utilizing Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room" technique

In 1969, composer Alvin Lucier recorded himself reading a text titled "I Am Sitting in a Room". Then, he played the recording back in the room and recorded the result. He repeated this process several times until the vocals were rendered unrecognizable. This same technique has been applied to Savages' Silence Yourself track "I Am Here" in their latest video (produced by Pitchfork.tv).

Like Lucier's piece, the band were recorded, the performance was played back and recorded again, and this process was repeated several times in the same room. With each re-recording, different sonic elements drop out-- vocals, drums, etc.-- eventually making the song unrecognizable. To hear the process, check out the audio:

Savages: "I Am Here (Real-Time Decay Version)"

Savages: "I Am Here (Full Decay Version)"

Here's Savages' statement about the video:

It was very much an experiment. This process had never been tried with a song before so we had no idea what to expect. We divided the process in two days: one for recording the band, one for recording the room the next day. Gemma Thompson and Johnny Hostile (who co-produced the Savages first album) sat in the basement all afternoon while the song was being played and recorded in the room 10 times in total, witnessing the slow disintegration of the song until it became really abstract, each instruments merging into the cacophony of this new orchestral autonomous ensemble.

Director Joshua Zucker-Pluda explains:

There's a real emotional intensity to Savages' live presence. I was interested in the idea that the band's performance could be so powerful that it would leave a kind of psychic scar or echo within the performance space. That the sound could become interwoven into the physical structure and sort of "haunt" the building.

The process behind Lucier's "I am sitting in a room" seemed to be an appropriate way to illustrate this concept. We used the band's performance to reveal the hidden resonant frequencies of the performance space. The process itself is a direct interaction with the environment, and it felt almost like an invocation or ritual-- like we were summoning the sound from deep within the walls.